Secrets weighed more on my shoulders than I had anticipated, and I was suffocating under the burden.
Caspian's world was imploding around him, and even the pretence he was keeping up for the world at large wasn't enough to keep it intact. The scandal, the betrayal—this wasn't a business issue. This was people.
I didn't know why he was shutting me out.
Dinner nights to raise funds for the charity, I'd noticed him pulling back further and further into himself. Overtime shifts saw him speaking less and less, and when he did, spouting a coarse word or two that was brief. I wasn't going to let him bully me on this so easily, though. I had made up my mind that—yes, my questions would be answered, and yes, I would be answering them for myself.
It wasn't impulsive. It was intentional. A night alone in the penthouse while Caspian was away at a meeting was the perfect place. Dark wood panelled and cluttered cleaned in disarray, the office was one where he did not receive visitors as a rule. Not even I had progressed that far, but tonight I would not be deterred.
Crunching my way through his desk, I knew that I was walking on hot coals. Caspian did not appreciate being questioned, and if he even suspected, he'd make someone pay for their assumptions. But I was no longer going to hold my peace.
The letter I had read was not stamped horrifically boldly, but what it held made me sick. It was made up of letters, balance sheets, and contracts, but there was one thing for certain: someone inside his company had betrayed him by providing his company's information to his competitor. It was a personal betrayal, intentional. The person who did so had access to everything—accounts, blueprints, even confidential mail.
My stomach was turning over as I bow-tied the whole thing together. This wasn't business. This was warfare.
I didn't even know when he entered.
"What on earth are you doing?"
His voice brought me to a stop. I advanced towards him, my heart thundering. He was in the doorway, his huge shoulders clogging up the doorway. His face wasn't one of fury. It was betrayal.
"I'm trying to help you," I told him, my tone colder than I intended.
"Help me?" He laughed once more, the sound metal and cold. "By going behind my back? By digging into things that you don't understand?"
"I understand more than you think," I snarled, voice shaking but firm. "Someone who is close to you and close to your heart has betrayed you, Caspian. And you're just sitting here and sitting back and letting this happen because you're too damn proud to trust anyone else!"
His face went cold, fists bunched in his waist. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"No?"
I rattled the file in his face, hand shaking. "Tell me. Tell me I'm dreaming this."
He remained silent, a firmer denial than any words I might have said.
"It's not your concern, is it?" I sneered, taking a step closer to him. "It's personal. And you're sending everyone else away because you can't deal with it."
"Enough." He spoke softly, threateningly, and I would not stand down.
"Why won't you let people help you?" I attacked. "Why won't you let me help you?"
The words were there, an offer. For a moment, I thought he was going to explode. His body was strung like a bow with fury, his chest heaving up and down with rough breathing. But something shifted.
You just don't get it," he panted, his words as abrasive as sandpaper. "This has nothing to do with loyalty or trust. This is about survival. One mistake, one lapse in judgment, and it's not just my business that's destroyed. It's all of it. My life. Yours."
The seriousness of what he was saying hit me hard, but I was not going to be intimidated.
"I'm not afraid of the truth, Caspian," I told him, staring directly into his eye. "But you are."
He stared at me for a moment like I'd slapped him. Anger in his eyes was displaced by something much nastier—something much softer.
"You don't have any idea what you're messing with," he panted, shivering. "I can't." He shoved his hand through his hair and away from me, the mask fracturing right before my eyes.
"What can't you do?" I spat in his face. "Can't tell me you care? Can't let me in?"
He stared at me, his silence as cold cement.
"Christ have mercy on you, Caspian, speak!" I snarled, venom dripping from my lips. "If you're going to drive folks to the exit, you'll be forced out of the firm. Chase off the ones who care about you!"
And that was when he turned away from me once more to turn and face me, face set hard and cold and brutal.
"You think I don't know that?" he sneered, cutting his words. "Think I wear myself out sick at night worrying about how close I am to losing everything?"
My anger immobilized me for a moment.
"I can't lose you, Lily," he said at last, his low, husky voice making my spine tingle. "But if you keep running your neck along the line like that, that is just what will happen."
My breath lodged in my chest. The expression his eyes had was one I never received from him before. It was loathsome and beautiful all at the same time.
"You won't lose me," I gasped, stepping closer to him. "But you have to let me be with you. You don't have to be alone anymore, Caspian. Not if I'm with you."
He stared at me so long, his own turning over mine as though he waited for some response. And then, slowly, slowly enough for my heart to struggle through the interval between, he leaned and brushed me with his fingertips.
"I don't know how to do this," he whispered, barely louder.
"You don't have to," I said to him, his face buried in the pressure of his thumbs. "We'll figure it out together."
His defenses at last crumbled. All his weight of fear, of pain, of desperation—everything was open to me.
But despite all that I had to maintain the pretense of hoping somehow we could survive, something was perpetually eroded by the cancerous doubt looming at the edges of my consciousness.
Caspian Grey was a man who lived in shadows. And loving him might mean losing myself in the darkness.